Mothership
Gradient Descent Session 2
March 15th, 2021
Players: Brendan, Josh, Stephen
The party return to the airlock chamber, planning to venture up the chute they noticed previously. As they peer through the doorway, making sure it’s safe before unlocking it, 9 androids drop down the chute. That’s unusual.
Kant quickly hacks the door mechanism to keep it locked. They wait to see if the group manages to escape, which they don’t. Returning, the group engages in a conversation with the androids through a speaker system in the airlock, convincing the robots they are part of a CloudBank team running experiments, hoping to suss out what their deal is. They learn they are failed androids, trying to escape. Good to know, but the party realize they their cover story is going to fall apart as soon as the androids see them. So they run away! And then come back and bang on the door pretending this is the first time they’ve seen these androids and that they are a new group here to help them escape.
They learn Android 842 managed to free the other 8 robots from a testing chamber at the top of the chute. They have no interest in returning, but describe the space as best they can. The chute leads to the Dis/Assembly section of the station. They give the androids a walkie talkie and tell them to wait for them in the elevator platform room. They then venture up this chute.
As they get closer to the end of the chute they hear the screams of agony from many androids. The room is pitch black, and they keep their lights down to not attract attention. [A stressful scene, so they roll to gain stress.] They move towards the loudest and closest sounds, finding one of the testing pods. They free an android, instructing it to go and free another, so one and so forth. They manage to free 14 androids in this way before that pod goes silent, the remaining deactivated androids being picked up and deposited down the success chute they just climbed from. As they look around the room they can see other pods slowly powering down. The room gets quieter and quieter, the screams abating as the testing ends abruptly, the androids and the testing machinery being powered down. [Another roll against fear to avoid gaining stress.]
Presumably Monarch knows someone is tampering with the facility.
I was better prepared for this session, reviewing the portions of the space station the players should have been able to reach quickly and making some summary notes for myself. This made running the game feel smoother. The entire session came about because of the random encounter with the failed androids. Love it.